'Boys and Girls Together...'

Last year's residents of Pennypacker Hall still talk about the last party they threw in what was then the all-male Union Dorm. It was one of their patented beer blasts, with all the usual ingredients--a couple of kegs, a T.V. set in the hallway, and 80 or so half-drunken freshmen blearily watching "Brian's Song." The only women who dared disturb the stately, all-male silence quickly left after an irate hockey player indignantly commanded them to "Shut the hell up, can't you see we're trying to listen?" The party's high point came a few hours later, when members of the group took turns relaying a spare automobile tire to the top of the building's central staircase. Laughing hysterically, they watched it bounce around the hallway after a four-story drop.

Parties in Pennypacker suffer less from the Budweiser-jock syndrome this year, and the only spare tires in sight belong to a few of the proctors. In fact, life in general at "the Pack" is now, by all accounts, something people are happy to talk about--a far cry from the days when residents regularly bemoaned being stranded in "the slums of Harvard," flushed away in "the cesspool of the University." In the first year since crowding forced the University to break with the past and house women in the Union Dorms, Pennypacker has pulled a startling about face, becoming a center of attention in the freshman world that used to revolve around the Yard.

Pennypacker's abrupt rise in esteem--"from the pits to the Ritz," as one former resident characterized it--provides plenty of fodder for characterized it--provides plenty of fodder for armchair sociologists quick to find an incisive explanation for any new trend. While finding any people who say they are unhappy with life in Pennypacker may be surprisingly difficult, it's a cinch to find 20 people with 20 different theories about why the dorm has suddenly become such a "bed of roses." But the various theories explaining the dorm's new-found popularity all return to a single fact: the decision to house women in Pennypacker has produced an environment radically different from the football-and-dirty-limericks atmosphere that used to prevail there.

John P. Reardon '60, associate dean of admissions who moonlights as a Pennypacker proctor, attributes the change in attitude to a greater degree of communication among the dorm's residents. "It's much different from last year, when some people on the floor didn't even know each other's names," he says. But at the core of this greater openness, Reardon recognizes the importance of the women's role. He notes with relief that the co-ed environment has acted as a civilizing influence, making it easier for students to meet each other while simultaneously taming the Pennypacker night-life.

Several of this year's Pennypacker residents share Reardon's belief. Many cite the building's unique floor plan--every room in the building opens onto a single central staircase--as the most important factor in getting to know each other. "People are always dropping in from room to room," says Caryl E. Yanow '80, one of the more than 40 women who have moved into Pennypacker this year. "You can't do that in a dorm that's built around entry ways," she adds.

The staircase certainly makes late evening bull sessions possible on a much larger scale. Around 11 p.m. doors invariably seem to open, and crowds soon form to discuss whatever Harvard freshmen discuss when they're tired of writing Expos papers. A while back someone discovered that the stairway is perfectly suited for games of vertical football, with each floor pitted against the other three. The evening games may keep the students away from their Gov 30 reading, but they also seem to bring most of them closer together as friends. "We have a very socially contained community," notes Philip A. Sisson '80, a second-floor resident.

But the building's design does not explain the change in attitude from past years. Togetherness among Pennypacker residents is nothing new; University housing officials have long noted that roommate groups from the Union Dorms have a greater tendency to stay together after freshman year than those from other dormitories. In the past this stemmed from feelings of inferiority: "We used to feel the rest of the University was dumping on us, so we just sort of stuck together," one former resident notes. This year's crew, on the other hand, is united in the belief that "the Pack is the place to be."

Another explanation comes from the "party theorists," students who credit the new mood to their efforts to promote Pennypacker's reputation as a "good party dorm." "It all started when we read in The Crimson that this place is the pits--because we know it isn't," says Christina L. Brown '80. The students got together the first weekend they arrived, passed a hat, and staged the first of a long string of parties that have enticed students from the Yard to make the great trek across Prescott Street. "Brian's Song" is no longer the main attraction, and there has even been a move by screwdriver-lovers to supplant beer as the official beverage. The scheme seems to have worked. Pennypacker is now such a popular place that it has adopted students from other freshman dorms who prefer to spend most of their time there--most notably the four or five from Wigglesworth whom the natives have dubbed "Wigglepackers."

Try as they might, the Pennypacker residents cannot turn every night into a party. Yet a more relaxed mood seems to prevail even when the students head back to their books. "There just doesn't seem to be the same tension before hour exams--people don't sit around thinking a C on a mid-term is going to keep them out of law school," Carl F. Muller '73, a veteran proctor, notes.

If the party-giving is only part of the story, then, some other factor must also account for the turnaround.

"I don't know if it's the women--it could just be there was something else lacking here last year that everyone else had," Muller, a business and law student from South Carolina, drawls. Still, Muller feels the presence of women has made the atmosphere in Pennypacker more natural, with the result that residents no longer feel different from their classmates who life in co-ed dorms. "Harvard can alienate a freshman easily enough without having to put him through that," Muller says. The men in Pennypacker are bound to seem more relaxed and content now that they are no longer "outcasts" from the rest of the University.

Last year's residents expressed their feelings of isolation with T-shirts acidly inviting their classmates to "Visit the Exotic Far East: See the Union Dorms." Of course, visitors were rare, and the students usually wound up journeying westward, desperately prowling the Yard or living the good life at Father's Six. But this year's group seems perfectly content to stay put. "People here don't go to the Yard dorms--except to steal their toilet paper and stuff like that," boasts F. Douglas Raymond '80. "On weekends we may take a turn around the Yard, but usually we wind up coming home."

"Home" is still a far cry from paradise for the Pennypacker group. Some things never change: the old reconverted apartment building still has more than its share of chipped plaster and loose tiles, and crowding has forced a number of old triples to make room for four roommates. Last year, Pennypacker residents complained vehemently about the facilities to the Freshman Dean's Office, Building and Grounds and anyone else who would listen. Some repairs were made, but only major surgery could bring the building up to par with some of the wood-panelled, ivy-covered Yard dorms.

Pennypacker residents still gripe occasionally about the facilities, but most seem to feel the dorm makes up in camaraderie what it lacks in luxury. "The facilities are so crummy that they must have made an extra effort to put good people here," one student theorizes. His view is accepted by those who have come to believe that Pennypacker houses the chosen people of the freshman class.

Not so, says Sherry Ward, who as senior adviser to the Union Dorms was one of the few women living in Pennypacker until this year. Ward says she made assignments to Pennypacker on a random basis and the "livelier, happier atmosphere" is entirely the students own doing.

That happy atmosphere runs into some rough going at times, though. Last October saw a number of residents voice concern about a "lack of security" in what the University has long considered a high crime area. The University's long-standing contention that the area near Harvard and Ware Streets is unsafe for women students--which until this year served as an excuse for keeping the Union Dorms single-sex--prompted over 60 students to sign a petition requesting the installation of iron bars on the buildings first floor windows.

The students obviously were not that upset, however, because their concern faded soon after the University's refusal on the grounds that window bars would block emergency fire exists. Life returned to normal "after we realized there aren't a bunch of murderers and rapists hanging around under the windows," says Raymond, a first-floor resident who signed the petition. In fact, University police statistics indicate the area does not have an unusually high crime rate, and there have been no incidents similar to last year's mugging of two Pennypacker residents weaving their way home after a night at Father's Six. Ward, a woman who felt secure enough to live in Pennypacker in the all-male days, dismisses the students' petition as "an overreaction to the exaggerated stories they heard from last year's people."

Other students have expressed frustration about what they see as Pennypacker residents' observance of the "incest taboo"--the tendency to view the man or woman next door as a friend or neighbor, but never as a potential sexual partner. There are exceptions, but in general the men and women "act a lot like brother and sister," a female resident notes. "But that's okay," she quickly adds, "because things are a lot more relaxed that way." The women join readily in games of vertical football and other traditionally all-male Pennypacker pursuits--a fact that surprises Reardon, who had expected the atmosphere to be "much more formal." But the formality and nervousness generated by conventional sex barriers are gone from Pennypacker; its residents seem to accept the incest taboo as part of living in a co-ed dorm.

If Pennypacker's students seem more satisfied with their surroundings this year, no one could be happier than their proctors. They now face, as one relieved proctor note, "fewer demands to serve as entertainers than last year"--which gives them more time to themselves. The decline in the number of tire-throwing binges, attempted swan dives off the third floor bannister, and other favorite pastimes of restless former residents is also a lot less trying for the proctors. Muller, whose country boy impulsiveness occasionally led him to join in the good times last year, still notes without regret that "the level of hell-raising is a lot lower during the peak-load times."

Ward also finds reason to smile. Though the greater number of first-floor parties has inevitably raised the noise level in her basement apartment, she is just as glad that she hears markedly fewer complaints than last year. Requests for transfers are also rarer, and all stem from uncontrollable factors such as roommate incompatibility. "It's a much happier place to be," she grins.

Former residents generally shake their heads philosophically when asked about the "new Pennypacker." Samuel A. Bern '79, who last year fled the dorm to the co-ed environment of South House, says his decision would probably have been different this year. "The facilities weren't so bad," he says, and if there had been women around to "make the place seem less like a locker room," he would have stayed at Pennypacker instead of transferring out.

Other former residents, intrigued by rumors that don't quite jibe with their own memories of the place, occasionally wander back for a first-hand look. And their conclusions are rarely negative. Matthew W. Copel '79 sums up their feelings best as he sighs ruefully, "I keep telling myself I should have taken a year off."